Sweet 16: American beats Big 12 (MAAC, MWC eliminated)

3 Jan 2014

In Memphis, the Cincinnati duo of Sean Kilpatrick and Justin Jackson dominated their Big 12 counterparts to lead the American Athletic Conference to a 75-66 win. The Oklahoma State duo of Marcus Smart (outdueled Louisville’s Russ Smith) and Markel Brown (team-high 10 points) did their part, but it was not enough as the American had a much easier time than they did in their previous one-point win over the MWC.The Elite 8 game was set up by the best showdown of the tournament, as the American won a 73-72 Sweet 16 victory over a great MWC team on the basis of Shabazz Napier (UConn shooting guard) and Shaq Goodwin (Memphis center).

Value Add rates the New Mexico trio of Kendall Williams, Cameron Bairstow and Alex Kirk as the best trio in the country, and they were almost enough to send the conference to the Elite 8.

In the mock tournament, all 32 conferences were seeded based on their ratings at www.kenpom.com, and then sent to their likely 2014 tournament sites. The top 10 players to date from each conference were pitted against their counterpart using the Value Add Predictor to determine how many points each player would score against his counterpart, with the winning team advancing. All players can be looked up at www.valueaddbasketball.com. The following is the Elite 8 box score, followed by the box scores for the two Sweet 16 games that set up the Elite 8 showdown: